Ocean Way HR5 Studio Monitor Review

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

The pro world is infected as well.

This is just standard industry practice. Having informed consumers make rational choices would be dangerous.

The lack of measurements and difficulty of comparing in the flesh are the same as in the consumer space.
What's left is hearsay and evaluation by ear.

Also you don't need to mix on current gen perfect speakers to get on the charts. See Tony Maserati and his System 1200s/Studio100s or Warren Huart's 1032s, or Billie Eilish/Finneas and how the bulk of it was supposedly done at home on HS5s (oh the heresy!).

A Genelec-y non-romantic/cold/industrial approach (compared to the lone hero) can be harder to sell to some.

On the electronics side some seasoned engineers still yearn for some even more transparent-er AD because their current one has jitter at -130dB and that is just absolutely hellish and unworkable.
And they tell you about their new monitoring controller with a claimed extra 0.5dB dynamic range way outside the audible range they really needed because it now gives them a dramatically better insight into reverb tails.
(But then it all goes through a 30 year old unserviced Bryston with something like -70dB THDN to NS10s placed sideways on the meter bridge)

People starting out are pushed to upgrade entry interfaces before getting any acoustics done, etc.

Industry interests, client/AnR retention/expectations, psychoacoustics, lack of education, endless misinformation from youtube sellouts, etc.

I believe broadcast/film is less susceptible to snake oilery.

The pro world is not infected. Just stay with the pros that have been around for the pros. This product masks as a professional monitor for the "audiophile" crowd.

 

[richard12511]

Really love the new beamwidth graph. The polar maps are a bit harder to read with precision, for me.

Also, this horn looks similar to the horns on the JBL Everest and K2?

 

[DDF]

The repeated sharp resonances are bizarre

I feel bad piling on, but... wow. A betting man would say this bad resonance:

might just be caused by this:

It'd be interesting to see a near field measure of the port to see just what's leaking out.

If the speaker is from the 70s, that pot hole port is maybe from the 60s: no flare, so small for the claimed spl's...

 

[richard12511]

Something I don't understand: The website lists the maximum peak spl as 110dB, but it seems that the test was run at 110dB?

 

[pavuol]

Also note that the manufacturer calls it "reference monitor".
Not sure what they are referencing to, but at least we can take it as a reference for future tests of horn speakers..

 

[infinitesymphony]

Maybe the huge SPL, advertised as 110dB, and you don't see too many studio monitors with a DAC.

The volume is impressive, but I can't imagine mixing on those, and I also can't imagine them being the soffit-mounted pair you use to impress clients and clear out handlers. Maybe good enough for tracking?

A local studio in the construction stage just outfitted their control room with Ocean Way HR3.5s ($21,120/pair + tax) and a Rythmik Audio F25 dual sub. Hope the mains perform better than these.

 

[617]

I feel bad piling on, but... wow. A betting man would say this bad resonance:
View attachment 67936

might just be caused by this:
View attachment 67935

It'd be interesting to see a near field measure of the port to see just what's leaking out.

If the speaker is from the 70s, that pot hole port is maybe from the 60s: no flare, so small for the claimed spl's...

That's not a resonance that's the KROQ dip

 

[AudioTodd]

Having just listened to about half of the YouTube video @amirm posted, I have to say this guy does not seem to be interested in accuracy. He keeps talking about “punch” and such, which I frankly think some listeners think is enhanced by some distortion products or perhaps other anomalies and they demand their presence. I will not but could name some “reviewers“ out there in ForumLand that I think also subscribe to this “sound preference” and also seem as clueless about the fact that what they think sounds live and real is actually not an accurate reproduction of the signal at all. At least if the studio monitors are providing this distortion to the producers, engineers or artists that want it, it won’t be permanently baked into the music we would like to enjoy without the editorial revisions they seem to require to pronounce it acceptable in “dynamics” and “punch” and what-have-you.

 

[fredoamigo]

Allen Sides ( Ocean Way Audio )
https://www.mixonline.com/recording/allen-sides-and-ocean-way-audio-428512

 

[suttondesign]

That plate amp looks a lot like a miniDSP PWR-ICE125

because it surely is. i just received one from minidsp today, and my first thought seeing the review was, hey, that is a $325 minidsp sub amp too!

 

[amirm]

If the speaker is from the 70s, that pot hole port is maybe from the 60s: no flare, so small for the claimed spl's...

It is indeed a straight, simple tube. Meant to indicate that in the review but forgot.

 

[Andreas007]

But who uses a CD player anymore?

I do! Tried often to left my CDs behind, but I just can‘t. As long as my Kenwood DP7090 runs (great quality btw) the CDs stay. Of course the player is feeding an ADI 2 Pro.

 

[xykreinov]

Having just listened to about half of the YouTube video @amirm I think also subscribe to this “sound preference” and also seem as clueless about the fact that what they think sounds live and real is actually not an accurate reproduction of the signal at all

This especially urks me, since it shows a tackling of the problem in totally the wrong way. If a recording doesn't sound "live and real" on a measurement-proven reference setup, then that should be sorted out in post-processing. It's no wonder I hear such big differences is sound quality between mixes from producers who have studios utilizing audio science, like trptk, and those that do not. Allen is apparently affiliated with many of such latter studios, and it shows in this roller coaster speaker.

 

[DDF]

That's not a resonance that's the KROQ dip

KROQ dip? I thought that was Rodney?

 

[hege]

Great to see reviews from my wishlist. Extra $25 donated.

Maybe check with MiniDSP software what settings they use.

 

[HammerSandwich]

I was thinking there should be one with his head up his ass...

Can we save that one for reviews which recommend products while containing no rational analysis?

 

[jhaider]

View attachment 67933

@TulseLuper is on the money. LOL. So they have effectively unlimited DSP and that's the response they ended up with.

The standard PWR-ICE 2x2 plugin has 12 bands of global ("input") PEQ and 6 bands per driver, as well as an xover function that allows even order electrical slopes of 12-48dB/oct. They also have an FIR plugin, but that's above my pay grade. I imagine capabilities are broadly similar, maybe allocated differently.

Given just the number of unsuppressed resonances I suspect that is not nearly enough DSP horsepower to make those diffraction horns work.

 

[pierre]

Yep, the -6 dB point is 103 dB, and Loudspeaker Explorer agrees. But then Olive says:



Problem is, it all depends on how you define "first". In Loudspeaker Explorer I interpret "first" as "rightmost", as in, first below -6 dB while descending from 300 Hz. Remember, it's the very definition @bobbooo suggested we use. Specifically:

View attachment 67921

And if we go by that interpretation, then the -6 dB point is not at 43 Hz… it's at 189 Hz!

View attachment 67920

I'm curious as to what formula you're using if it's not affected by this problem. I'm guessing your formula goes for the leftmost frequency that's above the 6 dB point, then use the previous frequency point right before that one?

Here is what I get:

"pref_rating" : {
"aad_on_axis" : 1.55,
"nbd_listening_window" : 0.82,
"sm_pred_in_room" : 0.4,
"nbd_pred_in_room" : 0.83,
"pref_score" : -1,
"nbd_sound_power" : 0.89,
"lfq" : 2.21,
"lfx_hz" : 188,
"nbd_on_axis" : 0.94,
"pref_score_wsub" : 8.8,
"sm_sound_power" : 0.74
}

my 2 lines formula also return 188 Hz

y_ref = np.mean(lw.loc[(lw.Freq >= 300) & (lw.Freq <= 10000)].dB)-6
lfx = math.log10(sp.loc[(sp.Freq < 300) & (sp.dB <= y_ref)].Freq.max())

 

[pierre]

The volume is impressive, but I can't imagine mixing on those, and I also can't imagine them being the soffit-mounted pair you use to impress clients and clear out handlers. Maybe good enough for tracking?

A local studio in the construction stage just outfitted their control room with Ocean Way HR3.5s ($21,120/pair + tax) and a Rythmik Audio F25 dual sub. Hope the mains perform better than these.

View attachment 67939

I also think they are to impress customers (which is a very important part of the business). I have many times see customers change there mind after pushing the volume up with bass shaking the room, and for that use case: main monitors do it well with low distorsion even at high volume, kind of club level but with hifi quality. People are not used to it and they like it.

 

[edechamps]

I use MATCH, with the optional condition that it looks for the cell that is the largest value less than the target (the infimum, aka the Greatest Lower Bound).

Ah, I see. Your formula uses "frequency of the highest SP point less than threshold", while mine (and @pierre's) uses "highest frequency whose SP is less than threshold".

Your formula is still susceptible to this problem though. You did not notice it on this speaker because you got lucky and the points ligned up just right: SP at 42.5 Hz is 101.65 dB, but SP at 189 Hz is 100.81 dB, so your formula picked 42.5 Hz. Had the dip at 189 Hz been just a little bit higher, or the 42.5 Hz point been just a bit lower, then your formula would have been confused too.

I think the way to reliably solve this problem is to gradually scan frequencies starting at 0 Hz, then stop just before one encounters a frequency whose SP is above the threshold.